Adventures of a Sea Hunter_ In Search of Famous Shipwrecks - James P. Delgado [0]
ADVENTURES OF A SEA HUNTER
JAMES P. DELGADO
IN SEARCH OF Famous Shipwrecks
Copyright © 2004 by James P. Delgado
04 05 06 07 08 5 4 3 2 1
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Douglas & Mclntyre Ltd.
2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V5T 4S7
www.douglas-mcintyre.com
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Delgado, James P
Adventures of a sea hunter : in search of famous shipwrecks/
James P. Delgado; foreword by Clive Cussler.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-55365-071-9
1. Shipwrecks. 2. Underwater archaeology. 3. Delgado, James P. I. Title.
G525.D44 2004 930.1’028’04 C2004-902817-0
Library of Congress information is available upon request
Editing by Saeko Usukawa
Jacket design by Peter Cocking
Text design by Ingrid Paulson
Jacket front photograph: unidentified diver on Ora Verde shipwreck,
Grand Cayman Island, © Jeffrey L. Rotman/CORBIS/MAGMA
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens
Printed on acid-free, forest-friendly, 100% post-consumer
recycled paper processed chlorine-free
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.
Portions of chapters 6 to 14 previously appeared in a different form in the Vancouver Sun newspaper. Part of the introduction previously appeared in the Washington Post. An account of the dive on USS Arizona appeared in The USS Arizona by Joy Jasper, James P. Delgado and Jim Adams, published by St. Martin’s Press.
This is for my mother, who had to tolerate human bones and stone tools in her bathtub as I learned about the past as a teenage archeologist. And for making her cry as a middle-aged archeologist who dives in dangerous places because, as she points out, I’ll always be her little boy.
This is also for Ann, who keeps the home fires burning while juggling a career and an often missing-in-action archeologist.
And last, for Beau, my faithful feline companion during many an evening’s writing marathon. It’s not the same without him.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Clive Cussler
INTRODUCTION: The Great Museum of the Sea
CHAPTER ONE: Graveyard of the Pacific
CHAPTER TWO: Pearl Harbor
CHAPTER THREE: Sunk by the Atomic Bomb
CHAPTER FOUR: A Cursed Ship
CHAPTER FIVE: Titanic
CHAPTER SIX: Carpathia
CHAPTER SEVEN: Catherine the Great’s Lost Art
CHAPTER EIGHT: Kublai Khan’s Lost Fleet
CHAPTER NINE: Buried in the Heart of San Francisco
CHAPTER TEN: Heroes Under Fire
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Hitler’s Rockets
CHAPTER TWELVE: The Last German Cruiser
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Arctic Fox
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A Civil War Submarine
CONCLUSION: What’s Next?
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories they were—about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, TREASURE ISLAND
FOREWORD
by Clive Cussler
Ships and their crews have been sailing off into oblivion since the dawn of recorded history. Through the millennia, more than a million ships have sunk or gone missing, along with untold numbers of their crews. A million ships is an impressive statistic not believed by most landsmen. Yet, to call the seven seas a vast cemetery is an understatement.
During the ages, storms have wreaked havoc on entire fleets, some consisting of more than a thousand ships, that were torn apart and hurled to the bottom. The first tragedy may have taken